As good news starts to come in, Americans ask what will take to start to reopen the government, President Trump targets the WHO, and the staffing chaos in the administration continues. Meanwhile, the death toll from the Ebola virus continues to rise, reaching over 1,800 in a single day. Ben Shapiro explains why it's not a bad idea to be diversified into something that has a solid value to it, and why you shouldn't be relying just on the market to guide your decisions. Recorded in Los Angeles, CA! - The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Protect yourself right now at ExpressVpn.org/TheBenShapiroShow. Don't wait until the market drops again to protect your hard earned savings. Text "send" Ben Shapiro to 474747 and you'll get a FREE information kit from Birch Gold. You have nothing to lose to take the first step. Call Birchgold and convert your traditional IRA or 401k into a precious metals IRA if that is something you are interested in doing so. See how simple and straightforward the move can be for you. Subscribe to the show and get 20% off your first month with discount code: "ELISSA" at 732-BENCHOLD. Learn more about your ad choices. Use promo code "UPLEVEL" at the linktr.ee/theben Shapiro. at checkout to receive $10 and receive 10% off the first month of your ad discount when you become a patron! You'll get 10% OFF the entire year, plus free shipping and free shipping throughout the rest of the month, plus an additional 3 months, plus a 2-month, plus 2-months of 3 months of free shipping when you sign up for VIP membership, and an additional 2 years of VIP membership when you shop at Birchgold, and two-months get a discount of $50 or two months get two months of VIP access to Gold Plus a year, and receive two months for VIP access. The offer validates your choice of the service, plus two months, and a FREE shipping offer, and they get a complimentary shipping and two years of the VIP membership. access to 7 days of VIP pricing, and all other options, plus they'll receive $50/place that starts starting at $99/place maxed-choice, and access to VIP access, and 2 other places get a choice of a proververing service.
00:00:00.000As good news starts to come in, Americans ask what it will take to start to reopen, President Trump targets the WHO, and the staffing chaos in the administration continues.
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00:01:40.000We have some actual good news this morning.
00:01:42.000We have some bad news in the sense that there is always a trailing indicator of where we are on this virus, and that is the death count.
00:01:48.000The death count in New York was very high last night.
00:01:51.000The death count overall in the United States was very high yesterday, but that is because we're moving quickly toward the peak.
00:01:57.000So the death count tends to lag the actual number of infections that have been identified by a significant amount of time, anywhere from a week to two weeks.
00:02:04.000Last night, we saw over 1,800 Americans dead over the course of the last day, which is a big number.
00:02:31.000The majority of the cases that have been identified, or at least the vast plurality of the cases that have been identified, have been identified in New York.
00:02:44.000So New York is indeed the epicenter of all this, followed by New Jersey.
00:02:49.000What's been kind of amazing is to look at the contrast between, say, New York and New Jersey and California, another highly populous state, which to date has still seen under 500 deaths in the state of California.
00:02:58.000And the lockdown orders that went into place in California went down three, four days earlier than the lockdown orders that went into place in New York, maybe a week earlier on the very outside in places like San Francisco.
00:03:10.000With all of that said, the big factor here is that not only did California lock down very quickly, California also is much more spacious.
00:03:17.000Out in suburbia, people are not on top of each other the same way they are in areas with public transportation networks that are used in enormous fashion.
00:03:24.000It's why you are seeing big upticks in Detroit.
00:03:27.000Basically, population density is a fairly good indicator that you are going to get a fairly large wave because people are infecting each other.
00:03:34.000Meanwhile, over in the UK, Boris Johnson remains in intensive care for the second straight day He apparently is not on ventilators.
00:03:40.000He apparently is on some sort of supplemental oxygen.
00:04:05.000So you remember that IMHG model that I've been talking about all week long?
00:04:08.000I've been talking about the modeling and how uncertain the modeling is and what that means for how we get out of this.
00:04:13.000And we're going to get to what all of the new data means for how we get out of this, how we reopen the economy and go back to some form of life in just a few minutes.
00:04:22.000But the IMHG model has been downgraded again, again.
00:04:25.000So over the course of the last five days, the IMHE model from University of Washington, which is a curve fitting model, meaning what they do is they look at all the data coming in from different areas, and then they try and draw a curve to fit the curves that they're seeing in other areas.
00:04:36.000So as more data comes in, then they are changing their curve to fit the data that is coming in originally.
00:04:43.000They're relying on Wuhan data, and they're relying on Italy data.
00:04:46.000And it turns out that that data was outlying data or not properly reported in the case of China.
00:04:51.000And so they were really overestimating what the peak would be.
00:04:54.000It looks like they were also really over.
00:04:56.000They were really underestimating how fast the peak would arrive because it looked as though it was taking a while for things to build to a peak because it did take a while in Italy, but that's because their hospital resource use was completely overwhelmed.
00:05:08.000They have now downgraded the model again, the IMHE University of Washington model.
00:05:12.000So remember, they'd suggest anything from 100,000 to 250,000 deaths by the beginning of August.
00:05:19.000Well now, they are suggesting that the total number of deaths in the United States, which they had pegged at like 93,000 as of last Friday, and then they downgraded that to 82,000 on Monday.
00:05:29.000They've now dropped it dramatically again.
00:06:08.000So either they underestimated the impact of people locking down, meaning that people locking down really spread the transmission rates.
00:06:15.000And it's a factor of the transmission rates, not the death rates, meaning that there are only a few factors here that could really be impacting the number of deaths total, right?
00:06:22.000There's the transmission rate, meaning, let's say that you hold the death rate constant, let's say the death rate is 1%, but the transmission rate is like 3 times, so you're going to infect 3 people.
00:06:32.000So that means tons of people get infected, and tons of people die, because you've infected a lot of people, even if the death rate is the same as, for example, the flu.
00:06:41.000Another possibility is that the death rates themselves were overestimated, meaning that the transmission rate was not as high as previously thought, but they thought that more people were dying of it than were actually dying of it.
00:06:54.000And then the third possibility is they thought that if people stayed home, then they would still be going out and meeting other people, but they didn't change that factor.
00:07:01.000What that really suggests is that either this thing is not quite as transmissible as they had originally supposed, or the death rate based on actual case numbers is not as high as previously supposed.
00:07:13.000It is really important to know the answers to these questions, because until we know the answers to these questions, we're not going to know how to roll out a recovery plan.
00:07:43.000Those are people who are coming in with symptoms.
00:07:45.000But that does suggest pretty wide and broad spread of this thing.
00:07:50.000So they've also downgraded the number of deaths per day in terms of the peak.
00:07:54.000So like three days ago, they were suggesting that the peak was going to happen, I believe, April 15th, and they'd suggested over 3,000 deaths, like 3,300 deaths on that day.
00:08:02.000Instead, they're now projecting that the highest day of death is going to be on April 12th and will be 2,200 deaths.
00:08:09.000Which is a lot lower, like a lot lower.
00:08:11.000And then it will quickly drop off to the point where we are experiencing double-digit deaths if this model holds.
00:08:18.000Which again, they've been dropping it consistently.
00:08:20.000So we hope that they continue to drop it.
00:08:22.000If this model were to be the one that actually holds, if this were accurate, then we would be dropping into double-digit deaths by May 21st.
00:08:31.000Also, when it comes to the resources that are used, Same sort of deal.
00:08:35.000They've dramatically downgraded the number of beds that will be needed, the number of ICU beds that will be needed, the number of ventilators that will be needed.
00:08:41.000Remember, they had been suggesting I believe 29,000 ventilators would be needed during peak resource use, which would be in three days, April 11th, right?
00:08:47.000Now they're saying they will need 16,500 ventilators, right?
00:08:51.000Which is a dramatic decrease almost by 50%.
00:08:53.000The same thing with the number of total hospital beds.
00:10:45.000So meanwhile, we are now seeing another good news that we are not actually being overrun in mass terms.
00:10:53.000So one of the reasons to flatten the curve was to prevent us from being overrun, was to prevent the hospitals from being short on ventilators, rationing of ventilators, short on ICU beds, short on medical resources.
00:11:04.000And as it turns out, Well, there have been hiccups in the process because distribution is never even or easy, right?
00:11:11.000If the federal government says we're going to hand you a thousand ventilators, that doesn't mean they're going to go directly to the hospital department that is necessary over the course of the next 24 hours.
00:11:18.000I mean, as we have seen with virtually every government disaster response, there are just Hold ups in the distribution chains.
00:11:26.000This sort of stuff is very common, right?
00:11:27.000It's what you saw in Puerto Rico when FEMA was shipping bottles over there, bottles of water.
00:11:31.000And then six months later, with everybody not having water on the tarmac, there's just millions of bottles of water.
00:11:36.000That sort of stuff does happen fairly frequently.
00:11:38.000With that said, the response of the federal government overall has been quite good.
00:11:41.000Here was Mike Pence yesterday listing all of the supplies that have been delivered.
00:11:46.000The New York metro area, including New Jersey, just in the last five days, more than 6 million N95 masks, more than 6 million surgical masks, and 2.8 million gowns were distributed to that region as well.
00:12:01.000Going next to New Orleans, some 837,000 N95 masks for healthcare workers, 165 surgical masks, other items including almost 6 million gloves have been distributed.
00:12:15.000Just in the last five days, 1.6 million N95 masks have been routed into the healthcare system in Detroit.
00:12:22.000Nearly 700,000 surgical masks and 24 million gloves, just as a portion of what's displayed.
00:12:30.000Guys, by the way, remember ventilators, ventilators, ventilators, ventilators.
00:12:33.000It turns out that on Monday night, both Cuomo and Bill de Blasio claimed that the need had been met for ventilators in the state.
00:12:38.000So there's all this talk about ventilators and how we're going to be splitting ventilators and rationing ventilators.
00:12:43.000That may still happen in particular areas if those areas see sudden spikes, for example, and they've not been distributed.
00:12:48.000But Gavin Newsom in California has announced that he's been working with state governments all over the place to purchase en masse ventilators.
00:12:56.000The United States government is supposed to be developing 100,000 ventilators.
00:12:59.000That's going to be way more than we need.
00:13:01.000Like, way, way, way more than we need.
00:13:02.000That should go in the federal stockpile.
00:13:05.000It's not a bad—just like we have lots of nuclear weapons we never have to use, better we should have too many ventilators on hand, and then we never have to use them, and then we have too few ventilators.
00:13:13.000With that said, all of the panic talk about how we were going to run short on ventilators, the government response was fairly decent here, and also, as it turns out, the estimates were way off for how many ventilators were actually necessary.
00:13:23.000Remember, Trump got ripped up and down when he suggested that when Cuomo said he needed 30,000 to 40,000 ventilators, he thought the numbers would be a lot lower than that.
00:13:30.000Turns out numbers were kind of a lot lower than that.
00:13:32.000So Trump may have been, you know, engaging in evidence-free happy talk, but his actual guess was not wrong on that one.
00:13:39.000Meanwhile, Andrew Cuomo came out yesterday, the governor of New York.
00:13:42.000He said, we have not lost a single human being because of lack of care.
00:13:45.000So for all of the talk about shortages, we've responded such that people are not dying because they're not getting the care they need.
00:13:52.000The question is, are you saving everyone you can save?
00:15:54.000As I say, it is a drumbeat out of the administration now.
00:15:57.000The CDC's Robert Redfield, the head of the CDC, he says the coronavirus death toll is going to be a lot lower than we expected if we continue to socially distance.
00:16:06.000The American public are taking the social distancing recommendations to heart.
00:16:09.000And I think that's the direct consequence why you're seeing the numbers are going to be much, much, much, much lower.
00:16:16.000Okay, not only that, Dr. Fauci came out.
00:16:18.000He says by next week we're going to be looking at the downside of the slope.
00:16:39.000It's going to be a bad week for deaths.
00:16:42.000But driving that and ahead of that is the fact that we're going to start to see the beginning of a turnaround.
00:16:47.000So we need to keep pushing on the mitigation strategies because there's no doubt that that's having a positive impact on the dynamics of the outbreak.
00:16:58.000Fauci also suggested one of the original models projected 100,000 to 200,000 deaths.
00:17:02.000As we are getting more data and seeing the positive effects of mitigation, those numbers are going to be downgraded.
00:17:06.000Right now, it's going to be a lot less than the original projection.
00:17:17.000Because if your model, right, if there's only X, Y, and Z, if X was the factor of social distancing, and if that remained constant, then the model could only have changed with Y or Z, transmission rate or death rate, right?
00:17:29.000I mean, those are the only factors in the model.
00:17:31.000There are not a lot of other factors in the model since everybody is staying home.
00:17:35.000Unless, you know, presumably, for some reason, you thought that the staying home was not going to mitigate this thing nearly as much, like you assumed that 50% of the population was going to stay home, and it turned out to be 100% of the population, but they've not really said that yet, and the UW model doesn't suggest that, the University of Washington model.
00:18:07.000He said there will be no religious services or dinner in restaurants for 12 to 18 months.
00:18:12.000Here he was yesterday basically saying we're going to have to continue to tamp down the economy until we find a vaccine which could take upwards of a year.
00:18:18.000Realistically, COVID-19 will be here for the next 18 months or more.
00:18:24.000We will not be able to return to normalcy until we find a vaccine or effective medications.
00:18:30.000If we prematurely end that physical distancing and the other measures keeping it at bay, deaths could skyrocket into the hundreds of thousands, if not a million.
00:18:40.000We cannot return to normal until there's a vaccine.
00:18:44.000Conferences, concerts, sporting events, religious services, dinner in a restaurant, none of that will resume until we find a vaccine, a treatment, or a cure.
00:18:55.000Okay, so it may be true that that is the case, but we're going to have to look at how other countries are handling this.
00:19:00.000And also, we are going to have to get better statistics on how all of this works, because there are really three questions that need to be asked.
00:19:06.000First, what is the true coronavirus fatality rate?
00:19:09.000That question is really important because it determines whether certain areas ought to be open or closed, whether we ought to pursue, in Sweden's style, a more liberalized society that presumes a very wide spread.
00:19:18.000So for example, if we have widespread already, and it is impossible to tamp it down such that we can actually socially trace, And contact trace?
00:19:25.000Well then, presumably we'd be better off just telling everybody who's most vulnerable, stay home, work from home, and telling everybody else, go out and get it, right?
00:19:34.000And right now, I've been very honestly perturbed by the media coverage of what's happening in Sweden, because Sweden assumed that there would be an uptick in deaths before there was a downtick.
00:19:44.000I mean, I talked about this yesterday.
00:19:45.000The second wave is the question nobody's asking right now.
00:19:47.000Okay, so we flatten the curve, we get it underneath the medical necessities, Presumably, if there's a second wave, we're not going to max out our supply chains.
00:19:57.000What happens when there's a second wave?
00:19:59.000So, if all you've done by flattening the curve is avoided some of the hospital overruns, which is great, but then there's a second wave, and everybody's going to get it anyway.
00:20:08.000You know, if the assumption is everybody's going to get it anyway, then you have to ask, okay, so how long are we holding this down here?
00:20:13.000When people look at Sweden and they say, well, they have a bigger first wave, the question is, okay, but the models don't end in August.
00:20:19.000I can cite that UW model until the cows come home.
00:21:05.000So, right now, there is an argument going on as to whether the numerator in the fatality rate or the denominator, or both, are flawed.
00:21:13.000We know for sure that the denominator is flawed.
00:21:14.000We know for sure there are lots more people who have coronavirus than have been tested for coronavirus and confirmed to have coronavirus, right?
00:21:22.000And as we'll discuss in a second, people are now developing tests, as they should be doing, in order to get to the point where we know the answer to that question.
00:21:32.000But as to that first question, it's now become a hot topic on Twitter, whether we're overcounting COVID deaths.
00:21:38.000The theory that we are overcounting COVID deaths is that if you die having COVID, That doesn't necessarily mean that you died from COVID.
00:21:45.000So if you're old and you're 85 and you get the flu, but you died from heart failure or something, does that mean that you died of the flu or with the flu?
00:21:53.000Now, is it true that we may be over-broadly characterizing COVID deaths by some?
00:22:00.000I mean, Dr. Birx did say yesterday that anyone who died with COVID is measured as a COVID victim.
00:22:04.000As we'll see in a second, it's also, I think, more significantly possible that we are under-counting COVID deaths at this point.
00:22:09.000But here is Dr. Birx talking about how we are categorizing COVID deaths.
00:22:14.000There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition, and let's say the virus called you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem, some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death.
00:22:34.000Right now, we're still recording it and we'll, I mean, the great thing about having forms that come in and a form that has the ability to market as COVID-19 infection, the intent is right now that those, if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.
00:22:56.000Okay, so people have been citing this to suggest that our count is too high because some countries are not categorizing these things that way.
00:23:02.000However, as we'll see in a second, There's also some pretty good evidence that the count actually may be significantly low.
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00:24:22.000Okay, so the counter evidence to the idea that we are under counting deaths comes courtesy of Gothamist.
00:24:27.000They suggest that there are a lot of people dying at home.
00:24:31.000Now, the city of New York is reversing its position and will probably start counting COVID deaths at home in addition to confirmed ones, which will increase the count.
00:24:40.000Originally, Gothamist had suggested that if you die at home and they say it was probably COVID, that was not being included in the city counts.
00:24:45.000Now they are changing that in a statement.
00:24:47.000Stephanie Buell, spokeswoman for the New York City Health Department, said the city would no longer report only cases that were confirmed by lab tests.
00:24:53.000She said the Office of Chief Medical Commissioner and NYC Health Department are working together to include in their report deaths that may be linked to COVID, but not lab-confirmed, that occur at home.
00:25:03.000The new protocol is likely to add thousands of people to the toll.
00:25:06.000That announcement came after New York saw the largest single day of deaths so far from COVID.
00:25:13.000But that didn't include many of the cases in which first responders encountered someone who had already died at home or non-hospital settings.
00:25:19.000Apparently, that happened 280 times on Monday.
00:25:22.000According to data from the fire department, which means that the total number of deaths would presumably be well over or about or well over a thousand deaths in New York City.
00:25:33.000So apparently over the last two weeks, New York fire department officials said that over 2,000 New York City residents died in their homes, 2,192 compared to 453 during the same time period last year.
00:25:44.000On Tuesday evening, the city reported that 3,544 people have died of coronavirus.
00:25:49.000So if you're actually to include the increase in count, then you'd be looking at an additional 1,600, over 5,000 people dead in New York City alone.
00:25:57.000So, as I say, the evidence seems better that we are undercounting COVID deaths right now than overcounting those COVID deaths.
00:26:03.000But bottom line is we don't actually know the numerator in the fatality rate right now, which brings us to the denominator.
00:26:08.000The denominator is the really big one because the numerator may change, but it's not going to change by orders of magnitude.
00:26:14.000It's not going to be as though there were 13,000 deaths in the United States, now there are 130,000 deaths because we counted wrong.
00:26:19.000Well, you may end up with 13,000 deaths in the United States, and maybe there are 15,000 deaths in the United States.
00:26:26.000And the reason the denominator matters is because, number one, it gives you a better indicator of exactly what your chances are of dying if you actually obtain this thing.
00:26:34.000Which makes a big difference as to sort of risk assessment.
00:26:36.000Like if you tell me right now that if I walk outside, there's a 1.4% shot that I'm going to be hit by a car and die, I'll probably stay inside.
00:26:43.000If you tell me that there is a 1 in 10,000 shot that if I get hit by a car, I'm going to walk outside, get hit by a car and die, I'll probably walk out the front door.
00:26:52.000So it really depends on the denominator here.
00:26:55.000We don't know what the denominator is right now.
00:26:58.000And this is where some people are working hard to put together numbers on the denominator.
00:27:03.000So there are several different efforts that are being put forward along these lines.
00:27:06.000According to Science Magazine, there is an attempt by the World Health Organization called Solidarity 2 to put together CERO surveys, studies that look for antibodies to COVID-2 The United States is also launching unprecedented efforts.
00:27:21.000One serosurvey is already underway in six metropolitan areas, including New York City, the hardest-hit city in the United States.
00:27:26.000A second, even larger one, is on its heels.
00:27:28.000Together, they should give a strong nationwide effort to track closely how many Americans have become infected as the pandemic unfolds.
00:27:36.000Zero surveys may also help efforts to develop vaccines, and separately, attempts to devise therapies to stop the virus from causing harm.
00:27:43.000Science has talked to Michael Bush, a transfusion specialist based at UCSF, and he suggests that this is actually pretty important because once we have serologic testing, then we'll know the numbers better.
00:27:58.000Meanwhile, we are learning that there are certain people who are really attempting to promote promote zero surveys and new information about how we get these antibody tests.
00:28:10.000So Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, he says we've actually developed an antibody test and we are starting to roll that out.
00:28:17.000New York State developed a Department of Health developed an antibody testing regimen that Department of Health has approved for use in New York State.
00:28:32.000This tests the blood to determine whether or not you have the antibodies, which means you had the virus and resolved the virus.
00:28:43.000That's why you would have the antibodies for the virus.
00:28:45.000That would mean that you're no longer contagious, and you can't catch the virus because you have the antibodies in your system, which means you can get to work, you can go back to school, you can do whatever you want.
00:29:00.000So the question is, what are we going to do with the antibody test?
00:29:03.000There have been a couple of questions about what exactly the antibody tests are for.
00:29:06.000One of those questions is, are we going to basically create a certificate that says you can go back to work at this point?
00:29:13.000If so, is that sort of a discriminatory model is one of the questions.
00:29:18.000And we don't even know at this point whether the immunity lasts for very long.
00:29:21.000So it's possible that the immunity lasts for six months and then you get it again in September, right?
00:29:24.000People get the flu every year sometimes because the strains are constantly changing.
00:29:28.000With that said, the antibody tests are useful for a broader reason, and that is we must know exactly how many people in the population have had this thing so that we can tell what the best policy will be.
00:29:39.000So David Neelaman is the founder of JetBlue and Azul Airways, and he has a piece over at Daily Wire that's pretty important.
00:29:45.000He writes, thanks to the work of three Stanford University professors and recently FDA-approved antibody tests, We will soon finally know the real size of the denominator of all of those infected by COVID-19, and that could be the game changer we need.
00:29:56.000The denominator is the total number of people who have been exposed to the virus, many of whom never knew they even had it.
00:30:01.000The numerator, tragically, is the total number of people who have died from the disease.
00:30:04.000Divide the numerator into the denominator, we get the death or case fatality rate.
00:30:08.000As the founder of several airlines in four countries, my company and our industry have been particularly hard hit by the spread of COVID-19.
00:30:13.000Since the outbreak, I've spent all my days and a lot of my nights trying to find a solution to save as many as possible of the 40,000 jobs for which I am responsible and do what I can to help avoid an economic catastrophe in the making.
00:30:23.000My search for a solution, writes David Nieleman, my search for a solution has led me to three amazing and dedicated professors and scientists from Stanford University School of Medicine with impeccable credentials.
00:30:34.000John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya, and Aaron Ben-David, using their epidemiology models and other evidence from China, Italy, Iceland, and the U.S., have questioned from the beginning the true number of those who have been infected by COVID-19.
00:30:44.000I've talked to Jay Bhattacharya before on the radio show.
00:30:47.000Everyone agrees that the number of confirmed cases reported is not a correct value for the total number of infected.
00:30:53.000Recent research says that up to 50% of those infected are asymptomatic, and of the remaining 50%, 80% have mild symptoms and are unlikely to have been tested.
00:31:01.000This creates a confirmation bias because we're only testing for people with the most severe symptoms.
00:31:06.000Ionidas, Bhattacharya, and Ben-David believe that the actual number of cases is very likely off by an order of the magnitude of 10, or maybe even times many more.
00:31:17.000is approaching 400,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 10,000 deaths.
00:31:21.000What if the Stanford doctors are right and the actual numbers of those infected is actually 3 million or 10 million?
00:31:26.000It would be a game changer in our fight against the virus.
00:31:28.000If it could be proven that 20 or 30 percent of New Yorkers were actually infected instead of less than 1 percent, it would tell us that the peak is closer than we think.
00:31:35.000And most important, the case fatality rate would be a tiny fraction of the percentage based on deaths as a fraction of confirmed cases.
00:31:41.000Most important, this information would provide governors, mayors, and public health officials valuable new data in determining the number of ICU beds that might be required.
00:31:48.000As of yesterday, New York had 4,000 patients in ICU beds.
00:31:51.000Governor Cuomo rightly believes that he could need 30,000 ICU beds at the peak of the epidemic with less than 1% of the population with confirmed cases.
00:31:58.000But if the actual number of people infected is much higher, then you'd need far fewer ICU beds.
00:32:04.000But now the FDA has approved this quick test, and while caution should be taken in relying on these tests, they're more than sufficient for determining the correct denominator from a population sample.
00:32:13.000So Bhattacharya and Ben-David have started a study in Santa Clara County in California using antibody tests.
00:32:18.000They've assembled a team that collected 2,500 blood samples over two days.
00:32:21.000Once they have the results, they're gonna compare those who test positive for the antibodies with the number of confirmed cases and give them scientific information that could predict better how many people actually have this.
00:32:30.000Also, unspoken is the reality, which is that if tons and tons of people have this, Then the idea of widespread testing and contact tracing is probably not the best solution, especially because, again, everybody is asymptomatic.
00:32:42.000So unless you're willing to put down tens of millions of tests every week and then quarantine people and socially track them, then perhaps the best case scenario is the sort of Sweden scenario where we take everybody who's most vulnerable and we tell them stay home and everybody else goes back out to work.
00:32:57.000That could very well be what we are talking about right here.
00:33:00.000Again, because nobody knows what that second wave looks like in the fall.
00:33:03.000That is the second question to be asked.
00:33:07.000One is the second wave and what exactly that looks like.
00:33:11.000And then finally, what exactly can we do here?
00:33:14.000Because once we've established the case fatality rate, we still have to figure out what does a second wave look like, and can it even be prevented?
00:33:20.000And Dr. Fauci says we're going to be in good shape to open the schools in the fall, which is kind of an interesting take from Dr. Fauci.
00:33:25.000Here he was explaining that schools might be reopened.
00:33:29.000I fully expect, though I'm humble enough to know that I can't accurately predict, that by the time we get to the fall, that we will have this under control enough that it certainly will not be the way it is now, where people are shutting schools.
00:33:45.000My optimistic side tells me that we'll be able to renew to a certain extent, but it's going to be different.
00:33:52.000So that is, um, you know, that is good news, but it does raise the question, okay, so let's say all these kids go to school and then they come home and grandpa and grandma are there, like, are they all going to get infected?
00:34:01.000And Fauci didn't answer that question.
00:34:03.000So presumably what we're going to, I think in the end, we're going to end up with a quick and dirty policy, right?
00:34:06.000There's a lot of talk about widespread testing and national coronavirus surveillance systems.
00:34:10.000Well, if we already have community spread, and if it turns out that as people suspect far more people are infected than we currently think, well, then what you're going to end up with is there's nothing we can do about community infection.
00:34:40.000It sounds a lot better than, I mean, there should be real unease over the fact that there are so many people who are looking out to create a national coronavirus surveillance system.
00:34:50.000Like, I don't know what that's going to look like.
00:34:52.000I mean, if you were worried about the invasion of privacy that was attendant on 9-11, then I think that we should be a little bit worried about the invasion of privacy that is attendant on, we're going to surveil you everywhere you go if you test positive for coronavirus or if you have a fever.
00:35:07.000Because again, these tests, the dirty little secret here is that the coronavirus tests are not supremely accurate.
00:35:11.000Like 20% of people who are testing for this thing negative are actually positive for coronavirus.
00:35:15.000They're not supremely accurate at this point.
00:35:18.000Okay, so I was going to get to more on coronavirus and perhaps we still will, but I would be remiss if I did not point out that in breaking news, Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the race.
00:35:28.000So that is a thing that has now happened.
00:35:31.000Brilliant, brilliant, that Bernie Sanders waited until after that Wisconsin primary, like the day after the Wisconsin primary, where it was obvious he was going to get shellacked anyway, to drop out.
00:35:41.000So lots of people waited in line, thanks to dramatic confusion over what should be done during a primary, during the COVID-19 era.
00:35:49.000So just adding insult to injury, he waits until after everybody stands in line to vote for him in Wisconsin, and then he gets out of the race.
00:35:57.000He's gonna give some sort of statement, but pudding for everybody, I think, is the short statement.
00:36:15.000I really don't have much more than that.
00:36:19.000The only reason he was staying in, presumably, was to get 25% of the delegate base, and then he could use that authority to kind of throw his weight around at the convention.
00:36:28.000He could still walk into the convention and say that I'm not going to throw my Bernie Sanders supporters behind you, Joe Biden, unless you do X, Y, and Z. So I don't think that he needed the formal delegate count in order to do that.
00:36:38.000With that said, He doesn't have a lot of weight now.
00:36:40.000And Joe Biden would be a fool to start catering to the Bernie Sanders side of the party.
00:36:43.000He's got to count on the fact that people don't like Trump to unify the party, not on catering to the Bernie Sanders sides.
00:36:48.000Because right now, Biden's entire campaign rests on the feeling that he is not volatile, that he is not radical, that he is non-threatening, right?
00:36:57.000That's the stuff where people are worried about Bernie Sanders.
00:37:01.000So if Biden starts catering to that, he actually undercuts his own message.
00:37:04.000Okay, we'll get to more of this in just one second.
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00:38:36.000We'll get to more in the breaking news side of the business in a second.
00:38:40.000First, if you have not yet had a chance to see some of our new content called All Access Live, you should head over to dailywire.com and check it out.
00:38:47.000Jeremy Boring and I kicked it off a few weeks ago.
00:38:49.000All the other hosted live streams over at Daily Wire, we've been continuing all this week at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific.
00:38:53.000Yesterday, I did the All Access Live and I actually wore a t-shirt.
00:39:14.000We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:39:17.000So as I say, the breaking news that Bernie Sanders has indeed dropped out of the presidential race, according to NBC News.
00:39:28.000The Vermont Independent Senator's 2020 bid started off strong.
00:39:31.000He narrowly missed first place in Iowa before picking up wins in New Hampshire and Nevada.
00:39:35.000All the while, his campaign continued to rake in millions in small-dollar donations and pack rallies full of supporters as he ascended to national front-runner status amid a crowded Democratic field.
00:39:44.000In 2020, a number of candidates backed policies similar to his own.
00:39:48.000But in the end, he ended up falling when the rest of the party Basically united against him because he was just too radical.
00:39:56.000His campaign officially stalled in South Carolina, fueled by a critical endorsement from Representative James Clyburn.
00:40:01.000Biden won the Palmetto State decisively, and then the moderate wing of the party consolidated around him.
00:40:06.000Warren dropped out of the race after Super Tuesday.
00:40:07.000She declined to endorse any candidate.
00:40:10.000A week later, on March 10th, Biden dominated in five of the six states that voted, including Michigan, one of Sanders' biggest 2016 victories, to grow his delegate lead over the Vermont senator.
00:40:18.000And then he lost brutally in Florida, Illinois, and Arizona on March 17th.
00:40:24.000A day after the contest, with the next voting night weeks away, Sanders' campaign manager wrote the candidate was going to be having conversations about moving forward.
00:40:30.000Now he has decided not to move forward.
00:40:31.000Presumably he's going to blame the lack of moving forward on COVID.
00:40:34.000He's going to say, if it weren't for COVID, I would have still been able to hold my rallies and I would have been able to get you all out to vote.
00:40:39.000And our socialist, never has our socialist agenda been more popular or more necessary.
00:40:43.000And people are going to be like, yeah, Bernie, go away.
00:40:46.000Which is how people have felt for several weeks at this point.
00:40:48.000So he bid a non-fond farewell to Bernie Sanders.
00:40:51.000We don't have the USSR anthem on hand.
00:40:53.000If we did, we'd be playing it in salute to the geriatric communist.
00:40:57.000Okay, meanwhile, as I say, back to the actual stuff that matters.
00:41:00.000When it comes to how we get out of this thing, some suggestions have been, I early on suggested that we needed to move from China to South Korea, right?
00:41:07.000That meant like contact tracing and heavy testing.
00:41:12.000If it turns out that not a lot of people have had COVID yet, that's going to be what we have to do, right?
00:41:15.000We locked it down to the point where basically the cases are close to zero, and then we can start widespread testing.
00:41:20.000If somebody gets it, we lock them down and we contact trace them.
00:41:23.000If, however, the denominator is really large, if it turns out that tons of people have this and tons of people who are asymptomatic have this, then contact tracing is not going to be useful anymore because just there are too many people out there to trace all of them.
00:41:34.000So we have to, that's why the data are, I keep focusing on the data because the data really are the key here.
00:41:42.000Meanwhile, White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner has created a task force reaching out to a range of health technology companies about creating a national coronavirus surveillance system to give the government a near real-time view of where patients are seeking treatment and for what, whether hospitals can accommodate them according to four people with knowledge of the discussions.
00:41:58.000I mean, you want to know which hospitals are being overrun and need supplies.
00:42:01.000But the question is whether the federal government is basically going to start monitoring every citizen in the country for COVID.
00:42:08.000Health privacy laws grant broad exceptions for national security purposes, but the prospect of compiling a national database of potentially sensitive health information has prompted concerns about civil liberties, which presumably it should.
00:42:59.000It's like, well, the ball's on those people.
00:43:01.000I mean, it was like, come enjoy our food in Wuhan.
00:43:03.000I think it was people enjoying the food in Wuhan a little too much that led to, you know, the worst crisis in the history of humanity in some ways.
00:43:10.000In any case, in Wuhan, it's now becoming clear that the battle is far from over.
00:43:14.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the city has announced only three confirmed cases.
00:43:19.000Authorities have ended the 77-day lockdown on the city, allowing inbound and outbound travel for healthy people after easing some residential restrictions to revive the crippled local economy.
00:43:28.000But now they've been tightening restrictions on some housing complexes.
00:43:31.000They've said others will remain in place after confirming dozens of new asymptomatic cases.
00:43:34.000And that's the big problem, is the asymptomatic cases.
00:43:36.000Unless you're going to have tons and tons and tons of people testing every single day, asymptomatic cases are going to arrive and presumably everybody is going to infect each other again.
00:43:45.000So that is why, once again, apparently the study that's being done, the serology tests that are being done, the antibody tests that are being done in Santa Clara County and all of this, those will be available on Friday.
00:43:56.000I am fascinated to learn what the actual numbers are in the denominator because the fact is we cannot continue this way as an economy.
00:44:03.000We cannot continue this way in terms of lifestyle.
00:44:04.000The American people are not going to sit home for the next year.
00:44:20.000Meanwhile, we are already seeing the small business aid program stretched to its limits because the amount of money that is pouring through the fire hose The nozzle on the fire hose just is not wide enough, and Congress is weighing adding more than $250 billion more to small business aid to keep those businesses alive.
00:44:37.000apartment renters didn't bother to pay their April rent.
00:44:40.000There's a patchwork of federal and local laws preventing eviction right now.
00:44:43.000Those laws are getting extraordinary in places like California.
00:44:47.000Almost all California foreclosures and evictions have now been put on hold for the foreseeable future.
00:44:51.000The state's Judicial Council on Monday issued emergency orders that stop lenders' efforts to foreclose on mortgages and landlords' ability to evict tenants, except in cases where public health or safety are involved.
00:45:01.000Also, the governor has issued edicts which include stiff limitations on lender foreclosures and tenant evictions.
00:45:08.000And now they are putting, I mean it is putting property owners and banks at financial risk because not only are they suggesting that they are going to push off the evictions, not only that, they are also suggesting that they're going to allow people not to be evicted for a full 90 days beyond the term of the national emergency.
00:45:26.000So once the national emergency is over, you still get to live in your home rent-free for three months.
00:45:30.000Which is a great way to destroy all development in the state of California and destroy the real estate market in the state of California.
00:45:36.000Daniel Ukelson is an apartment association's executive director.
00:45:54.000And it's going to lead to presumably some sort of government bailout on that end as well.
00:45:58.000The council's rules apply for 90 days after the state of emergency is lifted.
00:46:02.000The new rules mean borrowers and tenants do not have to respond to legal demands for payments during that period.
00:46:07.000And the rights to fight foreclosure and evictions are extended past the council's freeze period, which means it could be six months.
00:46:12.000People could be living in their apartments for six months with no rent because of the attempts that are being made by the California government.
00:46:17.000This thing has to end and has to end forthwith as soon as the data make it possible for us to end it.
00:46:22.000And we should be looking to how we end this thing in the broadest possible way as soon as the data allow.
00:46:30.000And I keep saying as soon as the data allow, because again, I'm not somebody saying go rush out into the street, go back to work, everybody enjoy your life.
00:46:35.000I don't think that's what the data show right now.
00:46:36.000But let's see what the data show in terms of what is realistic, because what I'm hearing from a lot of people doesn't sound very realistic to me.
00:46:41.000Hundreds of millions of tests being trotted out, and people taking them voluntarily on a daily basis.
00:46:46.000You being tested for coronavirus every time you enter a restaurant.
00:46:49.000What if I decide to go to two restaurants in one day?
00:46:52.000What if, as we say, a huge number of Americans have already had this thing, and many are immune?
00:46:57.000Or what if a huge number of Americans have it and are asymptomatic and are carrying it and there's no way to test them because they don't even show up on tests because the tests aren't sensitive enough?
00:47:05.000The Wall Street Journal is pointing out just how crazy this is.
00:47:09.000A sharp reduction in new infections is a critical first step, they say, but health experts say other steps will be needed to prevent another devastating outbreak that shuts the economy down all over again.
00:47:18.000That includes building testing and surveillance systems and a readiness to reintroduce social distancing and other mitigations on a smaller scale if necessary to give businesses and individuals confidence they can return to work without risking infection.
00:47:29.000Dr. Fauci says it's not like a light switch on and off.
00:47:31.000It's a gradual pulling back on certain restrictions to try and get society a bit back to normal.
00:47:36.000But none of these things are available.
00:47:39.000Are we really going to have these tests ready in September?
00:47:41.000I mean, he says we're going to be back to school.
00:47:43.000Again, once kids go back to school, this whole thing is over.
00:47:46.000Because kids are going to infect each other.
00:47:48.000They're going to be asymptomatic carriers.
00:47:50.000They're going to go see grandma and grandpa.
00:48:38.000Why is it that every other major Western leader has experienced a 15 point boost in the polls and President Trump experienced like a five point boost in the polls and now it's dissipated?
00:48:46.000Well, Part of that would have to do with the fact that President Trump has an unfortunate tendency to take his foot and shove it all the way down his throat.
00:48:52.000Sometimes he says things that are wonderful, right, when he objects to nationalization of industry because he has a gut-level love for America and American business.
00:48:59.000And sometimes he says things that are super dumbassical.
00:49:02.000And it's very difficult for the American public to feel solid and stable when he does this sort of stuff.
00:49:09.000It's all fun and games when you're on Twitter, but in the middle of a global pandemic, it seems like... Like, I had a theory for years about Trump that basically just ignore what he says and follow what he does and you're a happy camper.
00:49:18.000It becomes a lot harder when people are feeling this disquieted and when national leadership matters, right?
00:49:21.000I mean, this is why they got the Queen of England out there speaking for only the fourth time in the last 190 years.
00:49:27.000So anyway, President Trump said some good stuff yesterday.
00:49:32.000So first, he said he'd love to reopen the country with a big bang.
00:49:34.000Now, first of all, I think this is good when he says this kind of stuff.
00:49:36.000The reason I think it's good is because if we see that politicians actually want to keep things closed and just spend enormous amounts of money, we start to think to ourselves, maybe I shouldn't stay home.
00:49:47.000The fact that Trump does not Obviously want to keep people locked up is one of the key reasons that people are staying locked up right now.
00:49:55.000Because people are like, OK, well, at least I know that guy doesn't actually want to just chain me in my house and then toss me twelve hundred bucks a month.
00:50:01.000There's President Trump yesterday saying he'd love to reopen the country with a big bang.
00:50:05.000Well, I'd love to open with a big bang, one beautiful country and just open, but it's very possible.
00:51:26.000So according to the National Review, they have an editorial over there, they say that the WHO started off in really doing really great things like eradicating smallpox and moving toward the eradication of leprosy and river blindness, but they've really disgraced themselves.
00:51:40.000On December 30th, Chinese doctor Lei Wenliang warned colleagues about the outbreak of an illness resembling severe acute respiratory syndrome.
00:51:46.000Public health officials rely on the acuity of doctors, likely, but Chinese authorities didn't reward him.
00:51:50.000They summoned him to the Public Security Bureau in Wuhan on accusations he'd made false statements and disrupting the public order.
00:51:56.000The CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, then followed up with numerous other arrests and publicly warned it would punish anyone spreading rumors on social media.
00:52:02.000By mid-January, Chinese doctors knew COVID-19 was spreading between humans.
00:52:06.000On January 14th, The Who stated that there was no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of coronavirus.
00:52:11.000Two weeks later, The WHO Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who's the only non-medical doctor ever to lead WHO, flew to Beijing for a meeting with Xi Jinping, who so impressed Tedros, he lauded Chinese authorities for setting a new standard for outbreak control and praised their openness for sharing information.
00:52:26.000Lee might have disagreed with the sentiment, but it was too late.
00:52:29.000He had already died after contracting COVID-19.
00:52:32.000When the WHO Emergency Committee discussed whether to declare COVID a public health emergency January 23rd, international observers had definitively discredited Chinese health data, but Tedros continued relying on those data in arguing against declaring an emergency.
00:52:44.000Finally, he declared an emergency on January 30th, and he continued as late as February 20th to argue that Chinese actions were slowing the spread of coronavirus to the rest of the world.
00:52:53.000National Review correctly says the WHO has lent its imprimatur to Chinese disinformation and blessed China's slow response to its domestic outbreak, which likely caused a 20-fold increase in cases, according to a University of Southampton study.
00:53:04.000So, good for Trump for putting the screws to the WHO.
00:53:09.000Now, President Trump also was right to point out in his press conference yesterday that Joe Biden has changed his position on the travel ban.
00:53:16.000The media basically just glossed right over that, that Joe Biden had completely flipped on the travel ban from China.
00:53:22.000One thing with Joe Biden that I respect on Friday, he issued a statement that he thought I was right on closing the border to China.
00:53:29.000So I respect the fact that he was able to do that.
00:53:32.000You know, he took the opposite view and then he was able to do that.
00:53:34.000So I thought that was actually, I thought that was very nice.
00:53:46.000And again, this has been pretty epic, good Trump, bad Trump.
00:53:48.000So yesterday during his press conference, Trump talked about how well he gets along with Andrew Cuomo, who he has been in sort of a tete-a-tete match with.
00:53:55.000And then he talked about, also, some governors are bad and they're acting like political animals.
00:54:07.000Steady leadership would be very good at a time like this.
00:54:10.000And in terms of action, the leadership has been fairly steady.
00:54:13.000I mean, as steady as it can be in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic.
00:54:16.000But when the president says this kind of stuff, it's just not useful.
00:54:19.000I think we've gotten along very well with Andrew.
00:54:22.000And most of the governors, I mean, a couple I could tell you were, wouldn't matter what you did, you could give them ten times more than they asked.
00:54:32.000If the newspapers called and wanted a quote, they'd give you a bad quote, because that's the way they are.
00:54:38.000And it's, you know, this is beyond politics, what we've been going through here.
00:54:42.000Like, the constant feeling of war, war, war from Trump is actually not useful.
00:54:46.000Like, he'd have a leg to stand on when he says we need to unite in the face of this if, again, he were a more uniting figure.
00:54:51.000Meanwhile, there's continued chaos inside the administration.
00:54:54.000The top leader of the Navy had to step down after he went aboard a ship and proceeded to rail against a Navy captain who had been fired for sending out a missive talking about how the aircraft carrier needed basically to be docked.
00:55:09.000According to Politico, an aircraft carrier sidelined by a coronavirus outbreak, a promising captain fired for requesting help as infections spread among his 5,000 sailors.
00:55:17.000A service leader lists once more after the acting Navy Secretary resigned Tuesday following an uproar over a profanity-laced address to the ship's crew.
00:55:24.000The Navy has weathered its share of crises and in the past few months saw the previous Navy Secretary Forced out over his handling of a war crimes case, and the man selected to be its top admiral instead retired due to an improper professional relationship with a former staffer accused of making unwanted sexual advances to several women.
00:55:39.000But the resignation of Secretary Thomas Modley leaves the service lurching in the middle of a pandemic.
00:55:47.000Basically, there was this guy, Brett Crozier, we talked about this, the captain, who had blasted out an email to Navy personnel who were not in the chain of command asking for aid and suggesting that the carrier needed to be docked.
00:55:57.000And the head of the Navy then proceeded to visit the ship, and he called Crozier's actions naive and stupid and ripped into the guy over the loudspeakers on the ship.
00:56:27.000If the legislature wants to set up its own legislative council to oversee spending, then it can absolutely do that in legislation.
00:56:34.000I can absolutely haul in the Trump administration with all of their reports and go through it.
00:56:38.000That's why you have an oversight committee, for example, to oversee things, right?
00:56:41.000That's what the oversight committee is for.
00:56:43.000Instead, there are these random sort of inspectors general all over the executive branch, and this creates an unaccountable third, well, fourth branch of government that is not accountable to the president, really, because if he fires them, there's all sorts of hubbub, and also not really accountable to the legislature, because the legislature is not in a position to fire them either.
00:57:01.000Well, with all of that said, It's not a great look.
00:57:04.000When President Trump fired Glenn Fine, the acting Pentagon watchdog, he had been charged to lead a group to oversee the implementation of the coronavirus law.
00:57:12.000On Monday, Trump removed Fine from his post.
00:57:14.000Instead, he named the EPA inspector general to serve as the temporary Pentagon watchdog in addition to his other responsibilities.
00:57:20.000That decision effectively removed Fine from his role overseeing the coronavirus relief effort, since the new law permits only current inspectors general to fill the position.
00:57:28.000Apparently fine, we'll go back to his Senate confirmed post as Principal Deputy Inspector General of the Pentagon.
00:57:34.000There have been questions raised by Senator Lamar Alexander, for example, saying, like, I'm not sure why he did this, but that's not a great look.
00:57:39.000Also, this comes directly on the heels of Trump going after an HHS watchdog after they reported on hospital shortages.
00:57:46.000President Trump, the other day, like, directly went after this IG report.
00:57:50.000He tweeted out, why didn't the IG, who spent eight years with the Obama administration, did she report on the failed H1N1 swine flu debacle where 17,000 people died?
00:57:57.000Wants to talk to admirals, generals, VP, and others in charge before doing her report.
00:59:45.000Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:59:48.000You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.
00:59:54.000But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.